August 2018 Newsletter

2017/18 has been both mutually fulfilling and purposeful for ALF, clients and sponsors. Thank you! Here is an overview of activity.

ALF work from Peer Support principles, bringing lived experience of work, business, & family, alongside overcoming emotional, physical & mental health challenges, including trauma & addiction, to deliver success with organisations & individuals through their interactions & goals.

The directors are pleased to report that in the first 14 months of operating, ALF have secured the resources of 4 Directors, 3 ad hoc coaches/trainers, 1 nutritional consultant, & in the process have raised £26.3k & spent £26.8k to achieve ALF’s aims.

We now have a board of 4 executive directors and 3 Non-executive Directors (NEDS), with one vacancy for a NED to support and develop our Clinical work.

ALF have a multi skilled team consisting of people with training & qualifications in Peer Coaching/ Mentoring, Teaching, Counselling, Psychotherapy, Psychology, Research, Special Needs, Addictions, Trauma & PTSD resolution treatment, Bookkeeping, Accountancy, Administration, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Holistic Therapies and Complimentary medicine, Naturopathy, Nutritional Therapy, Chinese Medicine, Business and Executive Coaching, not to mention the artistic & interpersonal skills that the team possess which are indirectly useful to us!

ALF Peer Mentoring, Coaching, & Counselling work – Successes!

• ALF appreciate organisations who provide Into Work Support, by working with their hard core challenged individuals who have been stuck. ALF are pleased to report 3 successes this year.

• ALF helped 12 emergency service personnel overcome trauma resulting from professionally challenging incidents

• ALF has supported single parents suffering from being separated from their children, deal with grief.

• ALF has also supported single, working parents who need help to find a balance in their work & life, as well as support in overcoming the stress & fear of managing alone.

• ALF recognises that many challenged people are also highly functional & in jobs. Some are, however, at risk of stress at work & potentially losing their jobs. ALF has supported several clients resolve work related stress, returning to being resourceful & committed staff, who can continue to take care of their families.

• ALF have served 10 individuals with stress at work, and 10 individuals with life stress, trauma, and addictions. Trainee Counsellors have supported 4 individuals to remain in work. This has prevented clients becoming unemployed and kept them effective in work.

Services

ALF have run the following services throughout the past 14 months with the equivalent of 1.5 FTE members of staff.

• Six Resilience Programmes for:

Single mums
Senior Managers, including those in social care, voluntary sector, & probation
Men’s Resilience

• Fortnightly Peer Support group between April and August 2017

• Fortnightly Enterprise Peer Support group between April and August 2017

• Fortnightly PoppIns from April 2018 in

Dunstable
Luton
Biggleswade
Stevenage (Upcoming)

• Fortnightly Intentional Peer Support groups in our specialist areas of Addiction, Trauma, and Stress in:

Arlesey
Dunstable
Stevenage (Upcoming)

• Weekly training of all Department of Work & Pensions Staff (600) across Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire (end July 2018) in Mental Health Awareness

Research

ALF conduct their own research in the community, and have developed:

• The Healthy Intentions to Action Plan (HITAP). This plan gives a focus to one to one Peer Support. Each member of staff is expected to have completed their own HITAP as this supports their continued health & also enables them to create purposeful aspirations with a successful vision for the future.

• ALF have undertaken action research in supporting Positive Ways develop an effective Psychological intervention based on their researched Dynamic Experiential Narrative Theory (DENT©)

• DENT© focuses on the socially embodied experience (coined the ‘Anoni’) of each
individual & how they express & explain their experience in purposefully connecting with, & suitably meeting their community’s expectations.

• Emma & Keith will be working on the publication of a text & story book, that will underpin DENT© the proceeds of which will be donated towards ALF.

• DENT© includes a model of change & development, termed the Cycle of Adeption©

• This enables individuals to understand the process from being stuck, through purposefulness, to success.

• An Adept individual can sustain change and remain in command in the face of volatility, uncertainty, complexity & ambiguity.

ALF use the Positive Ways DENT© based Peer Coaching Diploma course to train Peer Professionals in the UK, which enables Career and Qualification progression from Level 3 Award to Level 4 Certificate, Level 5 Diploma and beyond.

Funds and Awareness Raising

• ALF have raised funds by taking on a major contract to train all DWP staff (600 by end of July 2018) across Hertfordshire & Bedfordshire, in Mental Health Awareness.

• ALF raised just under £2000 by holding a fundraising music evening in September 2017.

• ALF have attended 2 summer fetes in 2018 to raise awareness and funds.

• ALF have led the Business Community Hub twice monthly events alongside NatWest bank

• ALF took part in a school careers fair in Central Beds.

• ALF has built a partnership with the Disability Resource Centre, Dunstable, where we have an office and teach our Peer Coaching Diploma.

• We have also taught on some of the DRC’s Mental Health based programmes & Keith (our MD) has provided Financial Director support to the charity.

• ALF have trained a cohort of 8 Peer Mentors & are seeking funding for further cohorts on the waiting list.

Our partnerships demonstrate how ALF like to ‘mind the gaps’ & go where needed, rather than compete for resources for services which are already being adequately provided by other successful organisations.

The next 12 months

ALF have some ambitious plans for the year ahead. Here is just a taster of some of the things we intend to achieve:

• 5 more PoppIns & 3 more IPSGs across Herts & Beds run by trained Peer Professional staff & volunteers

• Reaching more organisations and individuals by expanding our network & building solid relationships with the Public, Corporate, & Voluntary Sectors

• Running 4 Enterprise & 4 Resilience Programmes across Beds & Herts.

• Host quarterly Community Hub seminar & workshop events across Beds & Herts

• Raise the profile of ALF via the Community College for Applied Commerce, once fully accredited.
• Translate our courses to online teaching programmes.

• Host a full programme of fundraising events throughout the year including quizzes, discos, and music, run by Peers.

• Continue our work with the DWP by providing bespoke courses to staff, supporting ‘complex cases’ customers, and adding our services to the DWP Dynamic Purchasing system.

• Apply to national funding bodies and local government for funding where the projects suit ALF’s objectives.

• Access apprenticeships funding.

• Hold a conference, sharing expertise and bringing others together who are working in the field.

Please do join us on the next leg of our journey! 😊

Other Case Studies through one to one and peer group support:

• ALF have supported a single mum to resolve issues in a challenging relationship and successfully co-parent with her partner in separate households. The couple have recently had a second child.

• ALF enabled a traumatised woman to resolve trauma and overcome severe levels of anxiety to move from being housebound to booking a holiday for her family.

• ALF coached a woman with post-natal depression to resolve addictive behaviour and relationship challenges to get back to work and eventually change career.

Emma Jaynes – CEO

Website: https://alfcic.org/

Facebook: @AdeptLivingFoundationALF

Twitter: @alfcic

Email: contact@alfcic.org

APPENDIX Positive Ways – DENT© Based Peer Coaching Brief Overview.

What is taught? Through a blended combination of online, self-study, classroom learning and practical role-playing, you will learn:

• The difference between coaching and therapy

• Peer purpose-focused coaching skills

• The necessary attributes for peer mentoring and coaching

• The ability to enable change in corporate and personal environments

• Ethical behaviour in peer support

The Core Peer Coaching programme covers:

• Emotional Resilience in Action (New ERA program) which is essential to business and life.

• The PW three step coaching conversation process

• Essential counselling and coaching approaches and, developmental psychology models, and

And is taught at three levels:

1. Build confidence in and understanding of Purposefulness, Mutualness and Impact, through being a CONFIDANTE.

2. Develop awareness of the outside world (the Inter-view), the person (Self-view) and then make sense of how the two interact (Life-view), by being a MENTOR.

3. Learn, grow and achieve through using straightforward developmental psychology and teaching techniques, by being a COACH.
Coaches can then choose to focus on either:

1. Organisational Enterprise option, or

2. Emotional and Mental Health Option

Why do we need to be adept at living, learning and contributing?

The world is becoming more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA). Having clear reasons to do things and working together supportively, by being purposeful, and acting in mutually engaging ways are critical success factors for us all.

Simply put, individuals need to be adept in co-operating with and succeeding in their environment.

What is peer coaching?

Peer Coaching uses lived experience and is a mutual, interactive, interpersonal process between two or more individuals, sharing information and emotional support for co-learning and growth towards meeting their purpose.

In the coaching process, high quality relationships are formed, based on trust, authenticity, straightforwardness, and support. In forming these mutual and meaningful connections with others, individuals gain a greater sense of energy, vision and ultimately self-understanding. This leads to greater commitment to, and attainment of, purpose.

The peer coach is trained not to be intrusive, but to hold the VUCA, to suitably lead their coachee through a cycle of adeption, so that the individual builds and grows with others, and the outside world.

Peer Coaching is aimed at organisations, groups and individuals.

• Organisations that want to introduce and benefit from internally generated learning and knowledge management, through peer support relationships, mentoring networks, or communities of practice.

• Groups often aim to provide similar settings in which individuals share lived experience, mutually, and together to foster individual growth and promote wellbeing

• Individuals learn how to improve and build more healthy relationships with themselves, significant others and their work, life and home environments.

For more information please visit: https://positiveways.co.uk/

ALF Newsletter – August 2018